Defence Finance Monitor #153
Defence Finance Monitor applies a top–down method that traces how NATO, EU and allied strategic priorities are translated into regulations, funding lines and procurement programmes, and then into demand for specific capabilities, technologies and companies. We use official doctrine as the organising frame to identify where strategic relevance is being institutionally defined and where it is materialising in concrete budgets, acquisition pathways and industrial capacity.
Our working assumption is that what becomes structurally relevant in NATO/EU strategy tends, over time, to become relevant also from a financial and industrial point of view. In the European context, this includes the progressive operationalisation of strategic autonomy: the effort to reduce critical dependencies, secure supply chains, strengthen the European defence technological and industrial base, and align regulatory, financial and procurement instruments with long-term security objectives. On this basis, DFM operates as a decision-support tool: it benchmarks investment and industrial choices against institutional demand, clarifies which capabilities are rising on the spending agenda, and maps the funding instruments, eligibility constraints and supply-chain factors that shape real-world feasibility across investors, industry, public authorities and research organisations.
Defence Finance Monitor rests on a single analytical premise: within the Euro-Atlantic security architecture, strategic doctrine precedes regulation and capability planning, regulation precedes budgets, and budgets shape markets.
DNSH and the Financing of Europe’s Defence Industry
Europe’s rearmament is advancing within a regulatory environment originally designed for the green transition, creating a structural intersection between defence policy and sustainable finance rules. This report examines how the EU’s “Do No Significant Harm” (DNSH) principle—developed in the context of the sustainable finance framework—is beginning to influence access to capital for defence-industrial projects across the Union, particularly in relation to the two central instruments of Europe’s emerging defence-industrial architecture, EDIP and SAFE. By reconstructing the legal genealogy of DNSH and analysing its interaction with the accelerated permitting regime introduced under EDIP, the study shows how environmental compliance mechanisms can function as practical filters for financing decisions affecting munitions production, defence manufacturing expansion and military mobility infrastructure. The full report, which provides a detailed regulatory and financial analysis of this emerging intersection between defence policy and EU environmental governance, can be downloaded in PDF format by subscribers of Defence Finance Monitor.
Security as an Investable Domain: JPMorganChase’s Security and Resiliency Initiative in a Transatlantic Perspective
When a global systemically important bank reframes “security” and “resilience” as a strategic investment theme, the relevant question is not rhetorical but structural. Can these concepts be translated into a coherent financial domain with identifiable deal structures, underwriting logic, and repeatable capital-allocation patterns across sectors and geographies? This analysis examines JPMorganChase’s Security and Resiliency Initiative as a case study in how strategic resilience may be entering the architecture of capital markets, reconstructing the initiative’s documented scope, separating verifiable commitments from interpretation, and assessing whether security-linked investment is emerging as a durable category for financing industrial capacity across the United States and Europe.
Dual-Use Infrastructure and EDIP Article 70: The Administrative Fast-Track for Logistics
European defence policy is no longer influencing industry only through procurement budgets; it is also reshaping the regulatory environment that determines how strategic infrastructure is authorised and financed. Regulation (EU) 2025/2643 introduces a decisive shift through Article 70, which classifies infrastructure linked to European Defence Projects of Common Interest as an overriding public interest, enabling accelerated permitting procedures for projects such as ports, rail terminals, logistics hubs and transport corridors essential to military mobility. In practice, this transforms dual-use infrastructure from a conventional civilian asset class into a strategic component of European defence readiness. The report reconstructs how this administrative fast-track operates in legal and financial terms, explains the interaction between EDIP permitting rules, environmental obligations and SAFE financing instruments, and clarifies what the new framework means for companies and investors involved in transport, construction and logistics infrastructure across Europe.
Without a structured map of the linkages between doctrine, budget and capacity, strategy remains abstract, capital remains misallocated, and industrial readiness remains reactive rather than deliberate.